May 2017 Digital Media Updates

Facebook Top News – May 2017

Facebook F8 Recap– Facebook held their annual F8 Developers conference in mid-April. There were tons of updates and announcements. Check out this post for the 10 most important announcements. As features go live we will also cover them in our Digital News Brief each month. The trends fall into three categories: Advertising, Messenger, and Innovation. Augmented reality is key and it’s a way for you to combine something real and something not real at the same time, typically done through a mobile phone camera.

Messenger has over 1.2 Billion users– This would make Messenger the second biggest social network (almost twice as big as Instagram at 700M). Facebook continues to innovate in Messenger – expect this to continue.

Messenger 2.0 debuts at F8– It allows you to do more through Messenger. Facebook wants it to go beyond messaging between friends. They likely want it to replace email. They’re creating an interface where you can find things like a search engine. They also have chat extensions that allow you to integrate a chatbot to help share an experience. Think grocery list, song list, etc.

Messenger launches Live Location – You can share your location live with people so they can see where you are. Say you’re meeting friends at a restaurant and you’re running late, you can share your location so they can see where you are. This is NOT recommended for those who say they’re “almost there” but haven’t left home yet. Busted! You can thank us later!

Messenger now has group payments – You can split the bill within Messenger now! Order pizza with friends and everyone can chip in their $2. From a business standpoint, Facebook wants Messenger to be THEE place where you can do almost anything.

New Insights includes omnichannel and automated insights– These features are in open beta and omnichannel analytics allows you to see the interactions on your Facebook page, but also on your website, on your app, and bot. It tracks conversions and purchases. It connects on-Facebook and off-Facebook behavior. If you get a ton of questions about ROI on Facebook, this is something that will really help you answer them. You’ll now be able to see if there is a correlation between Facebook activity and the results you want. Automated insights moves the data beyond based Facebook analytics and dives into Facebook activity and if it drives other things like purchases.

New Camera, Direct and Facebook Stories– They’ve introduced interactive filters (augmented reality) It feels like SnapChat, but it’s well beyond the functionality that platform offers. Facebook also introduced Stories. Stories is a way for you to share content that will delete within 24 hours. You can also create a story that you share only with specific people. It’ll live in Messenger, not on your timeline. Facebook Direct is similar to SnapChat which allows you to share something specific, with specific people, for a specific amount of time.

Facebook Workplace announces integrations at F8 – Facebook Workplace is a way for larger companies to take the functionality of Facebook and create an internal Facebook experience for their employees, privately. There are a number of changes announced at F8, but the main takeaway is that they’re now integrating with several other services.

Facebook tests split screens for live streaming– More than one person can participate in the live stream. It allows you to do interviews, for example similar to Google Hangouts. Initially it’ll release just to personal accounts and will roll out to business accounts later.

Facebook rights manager allows creators to claim earnings– One of the biggest complaints content creators have with Facebook is that other people will download their content and share it on other Facebook pages. That cuts out the potential ad revenue for the creator. If you upload your own content, you now have options on how to deal with that. You can block the content from being shared. You can claim the ad revenue. You can monitor it, or you can manually review each instance and decide how you want to proceed. This is similar to the set-up on YouTube. The goal here is a friendly environment for content creators without fear that their content will be stolen.

Pixel will mine more information giving you better ad performance data– Facebook Pixel is a code you put on your website to give Facebook data. At Boot Camp Digital, we run an ad that if someone looks at our 2-Day Boot Camp page, they see a video for that product on their Facebook page. Facebook is now looking to increase the amount of data they get so they can learn how effective their ads are and what results they achieve.

Facebook is testing video cover images– This is only in testing, but could be interesting if it is rolled out. You can see an example on the Narcos Page. We admit that this is a cool feature and it can be fun, but you have to ask yourself if you’ll get enough ROI on the customization. The answer is maybe yes and maybe no. Not much Facebook interaction is done on a brand’s page. Most people keep up with the page via their news feed.

LinkedIn Top News – May 2017

LinkedIn now has 500 Million users– We don’t talk about it much, but LinkedIn continues to grow. While this is a big number, it’s not as big as the other networks. Keep in mind, however, it’s geared towards business/professional social network. We’d never expect LinkedIn to be as big as Facebook or Facebook Messenger because there’s a limiter on the demographic.